.ART

We’re kicking off the New Year with a special edition of .ART Book Club, presenting Tryst: A Triptych of Stories, the first digital book featured on the program, written by Ana María Caballero. This collection of three lyrical and arresting stories, narrated by three female protagonists rooted in Brooklyn, invites readers into richly compelling inner worlds.

Caballero presents her book as a digitally native art piece and as a virtual gathering place in partnership with web3 publishing house Alexandria. The first edition of Tryst was released on December 6, 2022 as a collection of 100 NFTs and sold out within 48 hours.

The Second Edition of Tryst will debut on Thursday January 26^th, in honor of the book’s presentation during .ART Book Club, and will be available to collect on Alexandria.

Join our Instagram Live Conversation with Ana Maria Caballero and special guest Amelie Lasker, on January 26th at 5 PM GMT | Noon EST.

Additionally, one copy of the sold-out First Edition NFT will be gifted during the live conversation. Follow .ART Instagram @artdomains, enter the giveaway, and have your crypto wallet address handy for a chance to win the copy!

Tina’s Encounter with the Book

The way I crossed paths with Tryst evokes the spontaneous relationships in Ana’s short stories. As I walked out of the restaurant my last dinner in Miami during Art Basel, I ran into Ana. We first met at an CADAF (cadaf.art) launch event, and again at the SuperRare Gallery. It is true that third time is a charm — this time, Ana let me tag along to an after party and subsequently invited me to the Tryst book launch in Brooklyn a week later.

Late to the book launch, I quietly pushed the venue door open and was met with Ana’s soft yet averring voice reading Kylo Ren and the Divine Feminine. Missing the beginning, I mistook the protagonist in the story for Ana — a wife, mother, and poet. The protagonist has an unshaken and discreet obsession for Kylo Ren, placing this character in sharp relief in relation to her mundane familial and workplace routine.

In Ana’s own words: “These three narratives are told by women looking for ways to be free and failing. There’s beauty in the endurance delivered by failure — a beauty I love to dial. I say: ‘Hi, heartbreaking beauty, how are you today? Will you lift your foot from my throat, from my wrists, so that I might describe the shadow of your size?’”

In March, the fictional quarantine month forces the protagonist Leticia to face the changing relationship with her father after her mother’s passing, her artistic ambition, or lack thereof, and her relationship with her romantic partner, which is moving at a speed faster than she can grasp. In The End, English professor Luisa finds and fumbles an ambiguous connection with the Colombian coffee shop owner and his son. None of these stories and characters are apparently heroic or tragic.

Her storytelling gives nuances to the subtle emotions that we will likely omit when we are asked “how are you?”

As I closed my laptop after indulging in the characters’ worlds, I crawled up on the couch in my Brooklyn apartment and looked out the windows to observe the women passing by, guessing their origins and destinations, as if I can hear their ubiquitous and silent bearing of innate and societal duties echo with mine.

About the Author

Ana Maria Caballero is a first-generation Colombian-American poet and artist. Her work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package female sacrifice as a virtue. She is the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, and a Sevens Foundation Grant. Her Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net-nominated work has been widely published and exhibited internationally, recently at Gazelli Art House in London and at L’Avant Galerie Vossen in Paris. Recognized as a Web3 poetry pioneer, her work with poetry on the blockchain has been covered by major media outlets, and she’s been a speaker at events organized by the University of the Arts London, Sovereign Nature Institute, Untitled Art Fair, and the International Women of Blockchain Conference. She has three books forthcoming in 2023, written in the hours before the world wakes up. Much of what she writes in the dark can be read at anamariacaballero.com. Believing that poems are works of art, she co-founded digital poetry gallery theVERSEverse, one of the shortlisted nominees of the Digital Innovation in Art Award 2022.

About the Publisher

Alexandria (alexandrialabs.xyz) is creating limited edition digital books powered by web3. Alexandria published its first books in November and will release a self-publishing platform for authors in early 2023.